Welcome to the Smartdesc October newsletter. This month we discuss how you can can strengthen your charity’s cyber security posture and offer the following resources: A blog on cyber security takeaways from our recent roundtable, and another on vulnerabilities you should be aware of Free Microsoft Cloud Security, Information Governance, and Cyber Security assessments The…
In today’s ever-evolving digital landscape, staying informed about cybersecurity threats is crucial, especially for nonprofits, who are the third most targeted industry in the world. In this blog, we share three recent cyber security vulnerabilities you should be aware of, and instructions on how to protect yourselves from them. Smartdesc are now offering charities a complimentary…
Last week we held our third Quarterly Charity Technology Roundtable, hosted by Microsoft Tech for Social Impact. In this blog, we summarise our discussion on cyber security, including risk management, BYOD, reducing risk of human error and systems gatekeeping. Compliance Frameworks, Risk Management, Reporting It is good practice to define the framework(s) or standard(s) that are…
The Charity Digital Skills report, now in its sixth year, is widely regarded as an annual barometer on digital maturity, skills and priorities across the nonprofit sector. It’s the digital sister of our own annual Charity Tech Leaders Report which focuses on IT infrastructure, M365 & cloud, outsourcing and cyber security. In this blog, we…
How do you keep your charity up to date with ever changing data protection law, GDPR standards, Subject Access Requests and data breaches? This is just one of the questions we answered in our Information Governance and Data Protection workshop for nonprofit organisations, in partnership with Charity IT Leaders. Andrew Coyle, our Director of Information…
Welcome to the Smartdesc July newsletter. In this edition, we cover how you can utilise Microsoft’s new productivity tool Copilot at your charity, including: A blog introducing Microsoft Copilot, its capabilities and some important considerations Further resources from Microsoft and the National Cyber Security Centre Our Charity Technology Leaders Report 2023 Resources In this blog,…
Since its arrival in November last year, ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. This powerful new chatbot with seemingly endless possibilities took 3 months to reach 100 million users; Facebook took 4 years to reach the same milestone! Microsoft is leveraging some of this technology to introduce AI into Microsoft 365 this year –…
Welcome to the Smartdesc May newsletter. In this edition, we cover Information Governance and Data Protection and how charities can adhere to the latest legal obligations and best practice, including: Advice on upcoming changes to the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. A video on Information Governance and Data Protection for nonprofits. Further resources from…
The EU GDPR has been established data protection legislation in the UK and EU since May 2018. In the UK, the EU GDPR was replaced by the UK GDPR following Brexit in January 2021. Since Brexit, the UK Government has spoken about diverting away from the GDPR to a “more pro-growth and pro-innovation data regime…
Common mistakes charities make with Information Governance (IG) Many charities and non-profits approach us because they do not have an information Governance structure, sufficient processes, or training in place to ensure that data is being processed correctly and securely. This almost always is simply down to resource capacity and budget, which is of course understandable.…
